Limbaugh Auctions Democrat Letter

[Dr. Shane]

From the thread: MM gets it right. Rush apologizes

Sounds like a big deal out of nothing while drawing in ratings for Rush. I bet he is laughing his way all the way to the bank.

Now on Ebay!

Original Harry Reid/Rush Limbaugh Smear Letter

Current Bid: US $2,100,100.00

3 hours left of bidding

Up for auction is the original letter signed by 41 Democrat senators. This historic document may well represent the first time in the history of America that this large a group of U.S. senators attempted to demonize a private citizen by lying about his views. As such, it is a priceless memento of the folly of Harry Reid and his 40 senatorial co-signers.

The entire proceeds of this auction.. the entire high bid... will be donated to The Marine Corps - Law Enforcement Foundation, a registered charity which provides financial assistance to the children of fallen Marines and federal law enforcement officers. Rush Limbaugh serves on the Board of this organization and has been active on its behalf. All costs of this auction will be paid by the seller... every dollar of your winning bid will go to this charity, which has to date distributed over $29 million.

[Neil D]

Fron Media Matters-Kinda hard to argue with the actual script

During the September 26 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, Rush Limbaugh called service members who advocate U.S. withdrawal from Iraq "phony soldiers." He made the comment while discussing with a caller a conversation he had with a previous caller, "Mike from Chicago," who said he "used to be military," and "believe that we should pull out of Iraq." Limbaugh told the second caller, whom he identified as "Mike, this one from Olympia, Washington," that "[t]here's a lot" that people who favor U.S. withdrawal "don't understand" and that when asked why the United States should pull out, their only answer is, " 'Well, we just gotta bring the troops home.' ... 'Save the -- keeps the troops safe' or whatever," adding, "t's not possible, intellectually, to follow these people." "Mike" from Olympia replied, "No, it's not, and what's really funny is, they never talk to real soldiers. They like to pull these soldiers that come up out of the blue and talk to the media." Limbaugh interjected, "The phony soldiers." The caller, who had earlier said, "I am a serving American military, in the Army," agreed, replying, "The phony soldiers."

On August 19, The New York Times published an op-ed by seven members of the U.S. Army 82nd Airborne Division. They ended their assessment of the situation in Iraq with the following passage:

In a lawless environment where men with guns rule the streets, engaging in the banalities of life has become a death-defying act. Four years into our occupation, we have failed on every promise, while we have substituted Baath Party tyranny with a tyranny of Islamist, militia and criminal violence. When the primary preoccupation of average Iraqis is when and how they are likely to be killed, we can hardly feel smug as we hand out care packages. As an Iraqi man told us a few days ago with deep resignation, "We need security, not free food."

In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are -- an army of occupation -- and force our withdrawal.

Until that happens, it would be prudent for us to increasingly let Iraqis take center stage in all matters, to come up with a nuanced policy in which we assist them from the margins but let them resolve their differences as they see fit. This suggestion is not meant to be defeatist, but rather to highlight our pursuit of incompatible policies to absurd ends without recognizing the incongruities.

We need not talk about our morale. As committed soldiers, we will see this mission through.

On September 12, The New York Times noted: "Two of the soldiers who wrote of their pessimism about the war in an Op-Ed article that appeared in The New York Times on Aug. 19 were killed in Baghdad on Monday."

As Media Matters for America has documented, Limbaugh denounced as "contemptible" and "indecent" MoveOn.org's much-discussed advertisement -- titled "General Petraeus or General Betray Us?" -- critical of Gen. David Petraeus, but has repeatedly attacked the patriotism of those with whom he disagrees. For instance, on the January 25 broadcast of his radio show, he told his audience that he had a new name for Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE), a Vietnam veteran: "Senator Betrayus." A day earlier, Hagel had sided with Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in voting to approve a nonbinding resolution declaring that President Bush's escalation in Iraq was against "the national interest." Additionally, on August 21, 2006, Limbaugh said: "I want to respectfully disagree with the president on the last part of what he said. I am going to challenge the patriotism of people who disagree with him because the people that disagree with him want to lose."

As Media Matters has also documented, on the August 2, 2005, program, Limbaugh repeatedly referred to Iraq war veteran and then-Democratic congressional candidate Paul Hackett as "another liberal Democrat trying to hide behind a military uniform" and accused him of going to Iraq "to pad the resumé." On the day of Limbaugh's comments, Hackett narrowly lost a special election to Republican Jean Schmidt for Ohio's 2nd Congressional District seat.

From the September 26 broadcast of Premiere Radio Networks' The Rush Limbaugh Show:

LIMBAUGH: Mike in Chicago, welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER 1: Hi Rush, how you doing today?

LIMBAUGH: I'm fine sir, thank you.

CALLER 1: Good. Why is it that you always just accuse the Democrats of being against the war and suggest that there are absolutely no Republicans that could possibly be against the war?

LIMBAUGH: Well, who are these Republicans? I can think of Chuck Hagel, and I can think of Gordon Smith, two Republican senators, but they don't want to lose the war like the Democrats do. I can't think of -- who are the Republicans in the anti-war movement?

CALLER 1: I'm just -- I'm not talking about the senators. I'm talking about the general public -- like you accuse the public of all the Democrats of being, you know, wanting to lose, but --

LIMBAUGH: Oh, come on! Here we go again. I uttered a truth, and you can't handle it, so you gotta call here and change the subject. How come I'm not also hitting Republicans? I don't know a single Republican or conservative, Mike, who wants to pull out of Iraq in defeat. The Democrats have made the last four years about that specifically.

CALLER 1: Well, I am a Republican, and I've listened to you for a long time, and you're right on a lot of things, but I do believe that we should pull out of Iraq. I don't think it's winnable. And I'm not a Democrat, but I just -- sometimes you've got to cut the losses.

LIMBAUGH: Well, you -- you --

CALLER 1: I mean, sometimes you really gotta know when you're wrong.

LIMBAUGH: Well, yeah, you do. I'm not wrong on this. The worst thing that can happen is losing this, flying out of there, waving the white flag. Do you have --

CALLER 1: Oh, I'm not saying that. I'm not saying anything like that, but, you know --

LIMBAUGH: Well, of course you are.

CALLER 1: No, I'm not.

LIMBAUGH: Bill, the truth is -- the truth is the truth, Mike.

CALLER 1: We did what we were supposed to do, OK. We got rid of Saddam Hussein. We got rid of a lot of the terrorists. Let them run their country --

LIMBAUGH: Oh, good lord! Good lord.

[...]

CALLER 1: How long is it gonna -- how long do you think we're going to have to be there for them to take care of that?

LIMBAUGH: Mike --

CALLER 1: How long -- you know -- what is it?

LIMBAUGH: Mike --

CALLER 1: What is it?

LIMBAUGH: Mike, you can't possibly be a Republican.

CALLER 1: I am.

LIMBAUGH: You are -- you are --

CALLER 1: I am definitely a Republican.

LIMBAUGH: You can't be a Republican. You are --

CALLER 1: Oh, I am definitely a Republican.

LIMBAUGH: You are tarnishing the reputation, 'cause you sound just like a Democrat.

CALLER 1: No, but --

LIMBAUGH: The answer to your question --

CALLER 1: -- seriously, how long do we have to stay there --

LIMBAUGH: As long as it takes!

CALLER 1: -- to win it? How long?

LIMBAUGH: As long as it takes! It is very serious.

CALLER 1: And that is what?

LIMBAUGH: This is the United States of America at war with Islamofascists. We stay as long -- just like your job. You do everything you have to do, whatever it takes to get it done, if you take it seriously.

CALLER 1: So then you say we need to stay there forever --

LIMBAUGH: I -- it won't --

CALLER 1: -- because that's what it'll take.

LIMBAUGH: No, Bill, or Mike -- I'm sorry. I'm confusing you with the guy from Texas.

CALLER 1: See, I -- I've used to be military, OK? And I am a Republican.

LIMBAUGH: Yeah. Yeah.

CALLER 1: And I do live [inaudible] but --

LIMBAUGH: Right. Right. Right, I know.

CALLER 1: -- you know, really -- I want you to be saying how long it's gonna take.

LIMBAUGH: And I, by the way, used to walk on the moon!

CALLER 1: How long do we have to stay there?

LIMBAUGH: You're not listening to what I say. You can't possibly be a Republican. I'm answering every question. That's not what you want to hear, so it's not even penetrating your little wall of armor you've got built up.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: Another Mike, this one in Olympia, Washington. Welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER 2: Hi Rush, thanks for taking my call.

LIMBAUGH: You bet.

CALLER 2: I have a retort to Mike in Chicago, because I am a serving American military, in the Army. I've been serving for 14 years, very proudly.

LIMBAUGH: Thank you, sir.

CALLER 2: And, you know, I'm one of the few that joined the Army to serve my country, I'm proud to say, not for the money or anything like that. What I would like to retort to is that, if we pull -- what these people don't understand is if we pull out of Iraq right now, which is about impossible because of all the stuff that's over there, it'd take us at least a year to pull everything back out of Iraq, then Iraq itself would collapse, and we'd have to go right back over there within a year or so. And --

LIMBAUGH: There's a lot more than that that they don't understand. They can't even -- if -- the next guy that calls here, I'm gonna ask him: Why should we pull -- what is the imperative for pulling out? What's in it for the United States to pull out? They can't -- I don't think they have an answer for that other than, "Well, we just gotta bring the troops home."

CALLER 2: Yeah, and, you know what --

LIMBAUGH: "Save the -- keep the troops safe" or whatever. I -- it's not possible, intellectually, to follow these people.

CALLER 2: No, it's not, and what's really funny is, they never talk to real soldiers. They like to pull these soldiers that come up out of the blue and talk to the media.

LIMBAUGH: The phony soldiers.

CALLER 2: The phony soldiers. If you talk to a real soldier, they are proud to serve. They want to be over in Iraq. They understand their sacrifice, and they're willing to sacrifice for their country.

LIMBAUGH: They joined to be in Iraq. They joined --

CALLER 2: A lot of them -- the new kids, yeah.

LIMBAUGH: Well, you know where you're going these days, the last four years, if you signed up. The odds are you're going there or Afghanistan or somewhere.

CALLER 2: Exactly, sir.

[DrWhoCompanion]

Wow. My card-carrying Republican, Desert Storm/OIF vet husband would be a "phony" to Mr. Limbaugh. He's very much for us pulling out of the quagmire.

I cannot stand arrogance and mean-spiritedness from either side. It's the mud-slinging that makes things worse for those of us left behind when the soldiers deploy, not protests.

[Dr. Shane]

I wouldn't put any trust in Media Matter's selective reporting of what one of their idealogical enemies is saying. Rush Limbaugh spent well over a week explaining his remarks on the radio. His idealogical foes have taken excepts, like the one cut and pasted here, to portrait him in a way he is not.

Even liberal Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has tipped his hat to Rush Limbaugh's actions today. Actions truly speak loader than words and Rush Limbaugh has shown what a great big heart he has.

[Neil D]

This is "cut and paste"????

it's the transcript of what was said...

Talk about biased and looking at the world thru rose colored glasses!!!!!

[Dr. Shane]

What was cut and pasted was one small segment. Rush Limbaugh spent over a week talking about it. The only reason I don't feel sorry for Rush is that he is guilty of doing the same thing with is idealogical foes. But, even that, Congress does not write letters and reprimand them so this is a pretty unusual case in the battle of ideologues.

It is a childish game of "I got you". I think it is comparable to the Dick Durbin episode when Senator Durbin compared the US troops to Nazis, Soviets and those of Pol Pot. In context, he was talking specifically about the US troops guilty of abusing prisoners. But the right-wing, conservative ideologues played the "I got you" game with him until Durbin stated the obvious, which the left-wing, liberal ideologues now refuse to admit: "occasionally words will fail us and occasionally we will fail words."

Limbaugh was taken out of context and has explained that. Left-wing, ideologues continue to play their childish "I got you" games while Limbaugh is (as I predicted) laughing his way all the way to the bank.

[Neil D]

"A SMALL segment"???

That was everything around it, in context...

Good night nurse, Shane,...take off the rose colored political right wing glasses and look at it!!!!

Oh man...there are none so blind .....

Ok, Shane...if it is out of context, from the transcript, show it....Limburger can back peddle all he wants after the fact...but from the transcript, show the errors ....

[Dr. Shane]

Using terms like "back peddle" is idealogical rhetoric and not productive in the healthy exchange of ideas. Those on the far right would say that Senator Durbin was "back peddling" when he explained that he was misunderstood. Rather than using "rose colored political right wing glasses" (which sounds rather inflammatory) I try to be fair to both sides. Rather than say Durbin or Limbaugh were trying to back peddle, I give them he benefit of the doubt and let them explain what they meant. I view the gotcha-game as a little beneath me and try not to get caught up in it.

Limbaugh is famous for saying a person needs to listen to his program for six weeks in order understand him in context. Talk radio is a different format than other forms of media. Listeners feel they have a friendly relationship with the host. Talk show hosts like Limbaugh often share details of their personal lives like an exchange they had with a cashier, buying an item of clothing, dining in a restaurant, watching a ball game, playing golf, family issues or attending church. Hosts like Limbaugh, Hannity, Reagan, Ingram, Savage and Beck spend three, and some four, hours a day on the radio with their listeners. One cannot take one five-minute or even a twenty-minute segment of their program by itself and analyze it and do it justice. However groups like Media Matters (and other idealogical foes) are not interested in doing justice to those they disagree with.

[Bravus]

The fact that Limbaugh needed a week to explain it suggests in itself that it was very *open* to misinterpretation, and could have been said much better.

Bottom line: serving and ex-soldiers have infinitely more right to speak on the war than media blowhards.

[jasd]

QR frame:

What are all the ellipses [...] for in the transcript?

What's missing? Mebbe it's...

"I want to thank you, Mike, for calling. I appreciate it very much. I gotta — Here is a morning update that we did recently, talking about fake soldiers. This is a story of who the left props up as heroes. And they have their celebrities. One of them was Army Ranger Jesse Macbeth*. Now — and he was a corporal. I say in quotes. Twenty-three years old. What made Jesse Macbeth a hero to the anti-war crowd wasn’t his Purple Heart, it wasn’t his being affiliated with posttraumatic stress disorder from tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. No. What made Jesse Macbeth, Army Ranger, a hero to the left was his courage, in their view, off the battlefield, without regard to consequences, he told the world the abuses he had witnessed in Iraq. American soldiers killing unarmed civilians, hundreds of men, women, even children. In one gruesome account, translated into Arabic and spread widely across the Internet, Army Ranger Jesse Macbeth describes the horrors this way. We would burn their bodies. We would hang their bodies from the rafters in the mosque. Now, recently, Jesse Macbeth, poster boy for the anti-war left, had his day in court. And you know what? He was sentenced to five months in jail and three years probation for falsifying a Department of Veterans Affairs claim and his Army discharge record. He was in the Army, Jesse Macbeth was in the Army, folks, briefly. Forty-four days before he washed out of boot camp, Jesse Macbeth isn’t an Army Ranger, never was. He isn’t a corporal, never was. He never won the Purple Heart. And he was never in combat to witness the horrors he claimed to have seen. Probably haven’t even heard about this. And if you have, you haven’t heard much about it. This doesn’t fit the narrative and the template in the Drive-By Media and the Democrat Party as to who a genuine war hero; don’t look for any retractions, by the way. Not from the anti-war left, the anti-military Drive-By Media, or the Arabic websites that spread Jesse Macbeth’s lies about our troops, because the truth for the left is, fiction is what serves their purpose. They have to lie about such atrocities because they can’t find any that fit the template of the way they see the US."

*Jesse Al-Zaid

[Dr. Shane]

Quote:

The fact that Limbaugh needed a week to explain it suggests...

Limbaugh has been milking this story for all he can. That is what I mean by laughing all the way to the bank. He does that a lot when he makes the news. There is a reason he is #1 on he radio. He knows how to market himself and milk a story. The Senate reprimanding him had to be a dream come true.

[Neil D]

Using terms like "back peddle" is idealogical rhetoric and not productive in the healthy exchange of ideas. Those on the far right would say that Senator Durbin was "back peddling" when he explained that he was misunderstood. Rather than using "rose colored political right wing glasses" (which sounds rather inflammatory) I try to be fair to both sides. Rather than say Durbin or Limbaugh were trying to back peddle, I give them he benefit of the doubt and let them explain what they meant. I view the gotcha-game as a little beneath me and try not to get caught up in it.

"back peddle" is idealogical rhetoric and not productive in the healthy exchange of ideas. You are correct, Shane...back peddling is not healthy to an exchange of ideas...because it goes to honesty....I know you have been to debate classes...and in debate classes, if you are out to cloud the issues, you focus on small insignificant ideas and make them into mountainous issues[especially when you sense that you are loosing an arguement] We call it "distraction"...And that is what you are doing...You refused to honestly take into account facts and weight them honestly...You are looking at ANYTHING from Media Matters as absolutely bogus, let alone bias. You absolutely refuse to honestly weight the facts that MM presents, even if it is a transcript of what happened, such that all can see what was said. You refuse to look honestly....and that goes to your character...not Media Matters...and if that is inflamatory, so be it...But you have to deal with it...IT"S YOUR PROBLEM, not ours, Not Media Matters, it's YOUR PROBLEM... Start being more honest in evaluating the facts presented, and you might get some of your honor back.

Oh, and Shane...all that bovine byproduct in which you insist that we have to listen to Rush for 6 weeks to get an idea of what he is say....absolutely rubbish....I know within 5 minutes whether or not what a talk show hosts is worth listening to or not...

Ok, I am done with attempting to get you to look at evidence honestly, whether by someone you like or someone you dislike....You always must say something, because you can't help yourself. So, have the last word on this, Shane...you're gonna do it anyways...because I am done with this thread....

[olger]

One thing's for sure. Rush Limbaugh took it to Harry Reid in this instance.

[Dr. Shane]

Quote:

if you are out to cloud the issues, you focus on small insignificant ideas and make them into mountainous issues

Yes, both sides do this. In this instance, we have an example of Media Matters, Senate Democrats and other ideologues of doing exactly that. Rush's remarks really were insignificant but his political foes made a mountain out of a mole hill which resulted in Rush taking a $2 million + check to the bank for one of his favorite charities.

Quote:

You absolutely refuse to honestly weight the facts that MM presents, even if it is a transcript of what happened

I don't get my information about Rush Limbaugh from Media Matters. I don't get my information about Media Matters from Rush Limbaugh either. I don't need one to form my opinion of the other.

Quote:

all that bovine byproduct in which you insist that we have to listen to Rush for 6 weeks to get an idea of what he is say....absolutely rubbish....

It's not about me. Rush, himself, says that one needs to listen to his program for six weeks in order to understand it in context. He uses a lot of idioms and parodies and to that extent I think he is right. Otherwise it is like listening to only part of a conversation and drawing conclusions without being fully informed.

I give Rush the benefit of the doubt and give his political foes the benefit of the doubt too. I try to be fair to people and when they misspeak, let them explain themselves.